Trevor and Ryan are nerds. They have spent more than 6 of the last 24 hours playing Rainbow 6 2 (like the second Rainbow 6 game). They call out commands to eachother "watch out, two guys approaching from the left!" and "move in, move in" like total white gamer nerds. I said that even though they're in the same room they should wear headsets to more accurately, visually represent how nerdy they really are. I thought that was funny. Don't worry tho, I still love those broheeeems

Hey, what's up friends and family. I'm glad you've taken the time to see how my trip through South America is progressing...I'll be trying to keep you updated every two weeks or less, so please check back often, as there will be a lot to share. Thanks to my tech-savvy man, John Terenzio, I will be able to inform y'all on a relatively consistent basis throughout this six month journey I've undertaken with my two friends, Hunter Hagan and Frank Izzaguirre... I hope all is well with y'all, my loved ones...

God Bless, God Speed, and God Damn,

Anthony Traina

PS - my email is atraina1@ufl.edu , anything you'd like to inform me of, friends, please do so...

This weekend I was up in San Francisco and went to my first Bootie... I had never heard of this thing, but it was pretty cool. Basically it's a mahsup dance party that happens every two weeks at a club in SoMa. There are numerous DJ's and a live band that "mash up" songs. My personal favorite I think was U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday mixed with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and performed live by this band called Smash-Up Derby.

The coolest thing about the party however was the crowd. It was maybe the most diverse crowd I've ever seen in a party setting. Hipsters, yuppies, punk rockers and drag queens old and young all united together to hear awesome mashups. I think it was one of my first truly San Franciscan experiences because I found afterwords that I was the only person in the entire city that didn't know about it. Check out the website to get a taste of what's going on there and download some tracks.

So the Oscar nominations came out today (see here). I think Milk (and Benjamin Button) are a little over nominated, but I want to focus on Milk and something I call "sympathy inflation". First of all, I thought Sean Penn's acting was amazing. He probably deserves to win for that, although so do many others in the field, so we'll see about that one. But the movie got eight nominations including best picture, while being very slow and somewhat poorly constructed in my opinion. It's good, but not amazing. This reminds me of Crash, which got six nominations and took best picture in 2006.

Sympathy inflation I am going to define as this: when people think a film or other piece of art is of BETTER quality because its subject matter makes them feel sympathetic to a certain cause, the cause obviously being unrelated to the quality of the piece itself. I hated Crash, I thought the film was garbage. This is mainly due to the fact that it hammers you over the head really, really, really hard with its message, and I think that one important key to a good film is subtlety. However, it went on to win best picture when I think all four of its competitors that year were actually better films (Brokeback, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, and my favorite, Munich).

Granted, the message Crash was getting across is an important and virtuous one, but that doesn't mean the film was any less corny, mainstream, and totally undeserving of a best picture award. Granted also, Milk is a far better movie than Crash, and the field is a little weaker this year. But I wanted to ask... will sympathy inflation lift Milk to the top?

A place where I can express my cynicism for all those who care to see! Here goes... Trevor Ryan and I just went for a run to get rid of a small amount of our fat. Now I will eat like a pig and completely undo the little bit of work we did. To boot I probably wont work out again for at least a week, but will continue to eat like a pig during that whole time. It's like one of those 1-step-forward-10-steps-backward kind of things, where the working out ever so slightly slows you becoming obese and dying of a heart attack. SEE???

:)